To support high performance networking, networking components within computing and telecommunications systems must be able to effectively process numerous different flows (e.g. groups of packets originating from a common source). As performance expectations for such systems increase over time, these systems are challenged to implement more and more complex packet-handling tasks at ever greater speeds.
One common task to be handled in order to implement a networking system is to process and analyze the packets in a communications flow. A parser is used to review the header of the packet, which allows the communications system to understand how that packet should be directed and handled. Accordingly, there is a need for an improved approach to implement a parser for networking systems.